A Different Path
by RemovingMarble
Summary: Once upon a time, Albus Dumbledore rejected Tom Riddle's application for a position as professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. What would Hogwarts have looked like if Dumbledore had made a different choice?


_The world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. The following is a work of fan fiction, and the author derives no profit from this work._

 _The office of Albus Dumbledore, one winter night many years before the birth of Harry Potter:_

"I have traveled the world since I was last in these halls," the man who had once been Tom Riddle said. "I have pushed the boundaries of magic- pushed them, perhaps, farther than any who have come before me."

"Some types of magic," Dumbledore replied gently. "Of others, I think you may remain quite ignorant."

"Ah, yes," the other man said, rolling his eyes- eyes that glinted red, now, rather than the bright blue that they had been during his student days. "Your old belief that love is somehow the strongest form of magic- stronger, even than the... types of magic that I favor. In all my travels, in all my experiments, I have seen nothing to support such a theory."

Dumbledore smiled sadly.

"Perhaps, Tom, you have merely been looking in the wrong places."

"Perhaps," Voldemort said, inclining his head slightly. "Perhaps. Let me return to Hogwarts. Let me teach here. Let me share the knowledge that I have gained with your students. I can show them things that no other teacher could possibly show them, open up new horizons of magic before their minds."

"Horizons that I am quite sure that they would be far better off not exploring," Dumbledore said quietly. "I will not have you using Hogwarts as a breeding ground for a new generation of dark wizards and Death Eaters, Tom." Voldemort flinched slightly, clearly surprised that Dumbledore had heard the name of his organization of followers. He stood, eyes flashing with an angry red light, and pulled his cloak back around him.

"If that is your final word-" he hissed, but Dumbledore interrupted him.

"On the other hand," the headmaster said, "Old Merrythought has become absolutely desperate to retire. I've done everything short of compulsion charms to keep him on the staff, but he wrote me yesterday and said that he absolutely would not be returning after the holiday. That leaves me with an open staff position." He peered at Voldemort over steepled fingers, blue eyes twinkling. "You have a week before classes start, and- if the state of Merrythought's notes is anything to go by- you'll probably want to start lesson plans from scratch."

The rising Dark Lord stared at Dumbledore for a moment.

"What?" He finally asked in an almost indignant squawk.

"You're hired, Tom. I'll show you to your new quarters, and-"

"You're hiring me? I have the position?" Voldemort seemed almost alarmed at the prospect.

"Of course, Tom. Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"Then everything is as it should be. Now, your quarters are, I admit, in the older wing of the castle..." and taking the nonplussed Dark Lord by the shoulder, Dumbledore gently led him down the stairs from the Headmaster's office, blue eyes twinkling madly the entire time.

 _He's mad_ , Voldemort realized as his shock gave way to elation. _Absolutely, irreparably mad. I never dreamed, never_ began _to dream that I would get the post. Still, this will be perfect- a respectable cover for my activities, a perfect recruiting ground for my Death Eaters, all the mysteries and secrets of Hogwarts at my beck and call..._ An awful, evil expression that might have been something like a smile twisted Tom Riddle's face as he followed Dumbledore through the castle, a tiny part of his brain producing appropriate small talk while the rest of his attention was focused on reworking his plans to take advantage of this incredible turn of fortune.

Eyeing the old wizard walking before him on the stairs, Voldemort's smile widened. Dumbledore was a powerful wizard, a force to be reckoned with, but clearly his brilliance was tempered by a rare combination of naivete and lunacy. It would take a few years to lay the proper groundwork, but it would be child's play to arrange an appropriate... accident... for the old fool, and after that... Hogwarts, dear old Hogwarts, would belong to him.

To Voldemort.

 _Six Years Later..._

Julius Kerrywindle was having an excellent day. A _rewarding_ day. It had taken him three months to work up the courage to ask Alice Weaver out on their first date; another three months of careful, hesitant courtship before the first tentative kiss to his cheek, and an absolutely traumatizing date at Madam Pudifoot's before their first real kiss. But all of that was worth it. All of the nerves, all of the uncertainty, all of the wretched cupids that flitted around that thrice-damned tea shop- all of it was worth the passionate snogging session that the two of them were currently enjoying in the broom cupboard on the third floor.

 _If I'd known that she could kiss like this, I would have asked her out back in September,_ Julius thought to himself, feeling his girlfriend press her body tightly against him in the confined space. He placed his hands on her hips and wondered, vaguely, if they were far enough along that he could get away with putting his hands somewhere a bit lower. He was just plucking up the nerve to try when he felt Alice pull back suddenly.

"What's wrong?" he whispered.

"It's late," she answered. "I've got to get back to my common room-"

"Oh, come on," he rolled his eyes. "You're a prefect. No one's going to ask questions if you come in a little bit after curfew." The girl shook her head stubbornly.

"It's different now," she said. "Things- things have changed." He rolled his eyes once more.

"Don't tell me you're afraid of You-Know-Who," he said with a smile, pulling Alice back into his arms and brushing his lips across hers. She stiffened, but after a moment relaxed into his embrace, opening her lips for him-

The cupboard door swung open. Alice gasped and Julius- he did _not_ shriek, he told himself, boys simply don't shriek, but he might have given a very audible sort of gasp- Because standing in the cupboard doorway was, quite literally, Julius's worst nightmare.

The man was tall, with features that might once have been striking handsome but were now somehow burned and blurred, like a wax figure kept a bit too close to the fire. The man's eyes were a bright, piercing red, and his pupils were slitted, like a cat's. _Like a serpent's_ , Julius thought.

"Well, well." The man's voice was soft and cold. "What do we have here?"

"Prof- professor Voldemort," Julius managed to stammer. "We were just-"

"Just out after curfew? Just conducting an absolutely vile display in a broom cupboard like two rutting muggles?" The tall man's voice dripped with scorn. "Fifty points from Ravenclaw. Fifty points from Slytherin. Now get back to your common rooms now. If you are not inside in eight minutes- and I will know, believe me- then both of you can serve detention. With _me_." Both teens shuddered. You heard... stories... about Professor Voldemort's detentions. "Now GO!" he snapped, and Julius and Alice took off for their respective common rooms, their little tryst forgotten. In fact, Julius reflected as he ran, the memory of the Dark Lord's face glaring down at him might have put him off snogging entirely for the foreseeable future.

Tom Marvolo Riddle finished his night's patrol and returned to his office, simmering with rage. Those vile students! Snogging each other in broom closets like common muggles! Would they _never_ learn? His lip curled in disdain as he recalled the pathetic scene he had witnessed earlier. _All the secrets of magic here for the taking, and all these fools can think about is rutting like worthless animals_ , he snarled to himself. _It wasn't like this back in my prefect days. Oh, no. Of course, back then the caretaker really could hang you up from chains if he caught you after curfew..._ Voldemort smiled momentarily at the thought, then resumed his scowl as he reflected on the moral decline of the wizarding world. He would like to blame it all on the mudbloods, but to his disgust the pureblood students were, if anything, worse, with his own Slytherin house responsible for the plurality of the incidents that he had discovered. _Salazar would be spinning like a top in his grave if he knew the depths to which they've fallen...If I were running Hogwarts, we'd release the basilisk from the Chamber of Secrets every night at eleven minutes after curfew and devil take anyone who stayed out late to snog_ he thought with grim satisfaction. A broom cupboard full of petrified students; _there_ was an inspiring thought!

Voldemort seated himself at his desk- a costly antique donated by one of his wealthier followers to replace the battered old thing that his predecessor had used- and pulled out his schedule. The absolute worse thing about the eager young teenagers who kept the Hogwarts broom cupboards occupied was not the moral decline that they represented, but the waste of his precious time. He had had no idea of the demands that this wretched job would place on his schedule when he had first applied for it, seeking only unlimited access to Hogwarts and a way to recruit eager young followers. Now, as both Dark Lord and Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, he found himself juggling two very full-time jobs.

 _Have we still not scheduled the assassination of the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?_ Voldemort asked himself with a sigh as he checked his calendar. _That should have been done weeks ago. I'll have to owl Avery tonight..._ he glanced at the stack of paperwork in front of him. _Or at least first thing tomorrow._ He had sent Avery all of the plans, hadn't he? Rookwood had stolen a detailed analysis of the Department Head's home defenses from an unguarded desk in the Department of Mysteries almost a fortnight ago. He could have sworn that he had sent the plans to Avery, but with exams coming up it was hard to remember. He grimaced as he looked at the stack of third-year essays piled on his desk, waiting for him to grade them. _I could probably get a dozen out of the way tonight,_ he reasoned to himself. _That would have me almost caught up. Then I could be done by the weekend, and have Saturday and Sunday to get that blasted Department Head assassinated... exam grading will make things impossible if I drag things out much longer._

Nodding to himself, Voldemort reached for the stack of essays with a sense of grim determination. _A dozen tonight. That's achievable. Maybe more if I get a bit of momentum going-_

A bright burst of flame interrupted the Dark Lord's thoughts as his least favorite magical creature in the world appeared in his office.

"Fawkes," he acknowledged, drawing back out of habit. The bird glared at him for a moment, then dropped the envelope that it held in its beak. Slowly he reached forward to take it. _Not another staff meeting. Not another staff meeting. Please, whatever dark foul god I've sold my soul to, not another staff meeting..._

 **Dear Tom,**

 **Please be advised that I will seek your input at a staff meeting now scheduled for three o'clock tomorrow afternoon...**

Voldemort groaned.

 **when we will be discussing the possibility of adding an additional elective rotation on culinary alchemical principles. Given that your knowledge of alchemy dwarfs that of any other staff member, I hoped that you might be able to prepare a small report on the subject...**

The dark lord's head sank onto his desk. _Why?_ he thought. _Why me? Why always me..._

 **In addition, I realized earlier today that I have yet to receive from you a proposed curriculum for the seminar in Advanced Combative Transfiguration that you and I will be co-teaching next year...**

Voldemort blanched. He had forgotten that wretched class. What madness had made him propose the idea in the first place? Ah, yes- he had thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to learn all of Dumbledore's favorite dueling tricks in order to use them against him later on. A brilliant idea, at the time. Now it just seemed like a horrific drain on time that he simply didn't have- how would he prepare for another class on top of what he was already doing? How would he grade it? He didn't need Sybil Trelawney's alleged skills as a seer to know that Dumbledore was unlikely to be doing much of the administrative work for the class...

 **If you could bring me your proposals tomorrow so that we can review them after the meeting, that would be ideal.**

 **Sincerely,**

 **Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore**

Voldemort hid his face in his hands for a few moments, ignoring Dumbledore's pyrotechnical carrier pigeon as the vile thing disappeared in another burst of flame. _Curses. Curse you, Dumbledore._ With a great sigh, he pushed the essays back across his desk. They would have to come later; he'd be up half the night as it was, drafting his proposal for the seminar class and preparing notes for the faculty meeting. Unless he was remarkably productive tomorrow morning- unlikely, as he had office hours, and that wretched Evans girl was almost guaranteed to show up to ask him about some advanced bit of magic that she'd have no business learning for at least two more years- then he would be grading papers all weekend.

 _And that means that the Director of Magical Law Enforcement's assassination will almost certainly have to wait until after exams. Damn you, Dumbledore. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were doing this on purpose._

 _Author's Note: This was originally intended as a one-shot. I have ideas for further chapters and may decide to expand the story depending on its reception._


End file.
